this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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Mozilla has a close relationship with Google, as most of Firefox's revenue comes from the agreement keeping Google as the browser's default search engine. However, the search giant is now officially a monopoly, and a future court decision could have an unprecedented impact on Mozilla's ability to keep things "business as usual."

United States District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of building a monopolistic position in web search. The Mountain View corporation spent billions of dollars becoming the leading search provider for computing platforms and web browsers on PC and mobile devices.

Most of the $21 billion spent went to Apple in exchange for setting Google as the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems. The judge will now need to decide on a penalty for the company's actions, including the potential of forcing Google to stop payments to its search "partners completely," which could have dire consequences for smaller companies like Mozilla.

Its most recent financials show Mozilla gets $510 million out of its $593 million in total revenue from its Google partnership. This precarious financial position is a side effect of its deal with Alphabet, which made Google the search engine default for newer Firefox installations.

The open-source web browser has experienced a steady market share decline over the past few years. Meanwhile, Mozilla management was paid millions to develop a new "vision" of a theoretical future with AI chatbots. Mozilla Corporation, the wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation managing Firefox development, could find itself in a severe struggle for revenue if Google's money suddenly dried up.

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[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Cool. Mozilla is a corrupt, useless org anyway. Not much better than Google.

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Mozilla isn't and org. Mozilla Foundation is an org. And they get a fraction of that money. I don't know what you're talking about but you don't either, it seems.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago

Tomato tomato

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I can very much imagine this being a short to medium term issue (and still an existential threat to Mozilla), but hopefully, this improves the situation to the point that there is no future company like google who artificially maintains control over browsers and search engines, rendering competitors dependent on these massive contracts? I mean, this is what got them there, right?

[–] magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If were going to go after them for a monopoly, shouldn't it be for chromium? At least with search there are actual viable alternatives that don't get 86% of their money from a direct competitor...

[–] odium@programming.dev 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think they pay others to use chromium tho. Other browsers independently decided to use it. That makes it a lot harder to argue that this is a monopolistic practice than when they explicitly pay people to make them the default.

[–] anyhow2503@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

That's not entirely accurate. Google's influence on the web has grown even beyond the web browser engine majority share (which is bad enough in itself). They offer one of the most popular web frameworks and run several of the most popular websites. There is almost no way to compete when the market leader is simultaneously the developer and the major user of new features. Of course everyone else is going to switch to using your browser engine. What else are they gonna do? There are even websites now that just check the user agent string and refuse service if you don't use a chromium based browser. Shit's fucked.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 0 points 3 months ago

Even if Mozilla survives it'll need to cut off some spendings.

[–] TheJack@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (10 children)

I have written this elsewhere many times and I know it's extremely unpopular with FOSS crowd but truth needs to be told in here once again:

Everyday I use Debian, Ubuntu and Windows 10/11/Servers.

I'm an "IT guy" and have installed Firefox on literally hundreds of computers over a decade. I also install and setup extensions like uBlock Origin (with few comprehensive ad & malware blocking lists) , Dark Reader, Auto Delete Cookies, Crypto blocking and many more... but I have given up on Firefox 2016 onwards.

You could give Mozilla 10 billion per year just to develop Firefox but Mozilla can and will decide that they wanna spend only 1 or 10 percent of that money on actual Firefox development.

They will spend most of their money on anything but Firefox.

I mean I love world peace and cancer, aids free world too but with the money Mozilla get in a year, none of that gonna happen.

Mozilla couldn't stop Russia attack on Ukraine; neither were able to solve Israel Palestinian conflict nor hunger and migration from African countries to Europe...

Then what are they spending money on?

What they could have done successfully is to spend all the money they made from Firefox towards Firefox development alone. But this is the thing Mozilla do not want to do and are open about it.

Now I don't want Mozilla to stop developing Firefox either but because Firefox needs money from Google, Google must allow their monopoly on search... is utterly insane thinking.

If Mozilla cannot survive without Google monopoly, so be it.

I would say some open source/ Linux foundations/ Linux distros needs to fork Firefox and let Mozilla die peacefully.

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Servo is working on becoming a standalone browser.

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[–] MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

There is already the Ladybird project, which is a fork of the SerenityOS browser. We can say that it is a spiritual successor, although its license is more permissive than the Firefox browser.

[–] greywolf0x1@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago

I think Servo, not the Ladybird project would be the rightful successor to Firefox

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 0 points 3 months ago

Ladybird is in a prime position if they keep up their steady progress, I really hope they succeed.

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[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago

How about... AI instead?

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[–] MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Don't worry, we have a possible replacement for Mozilla, meet Ladybird

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

So who's going to fund that who can't fund Mozilla Foundation?

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[–] aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub 0 points 3 months ago

This project looks very cool, I hope it comes to be

[–] FierySpectre@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] Bluefruit@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

While I do want competition in the web space, its a good thing that Google could get told to stop doing stuff like this.

I dont want Mozilla to die of course but companies need to be held responsible for all the shit they pull. I'd imagine if Mozilla wasnt able to maintain firefox anymore it would fall to the open source community like they said in the article and I'd probably still use it.

No one company should own the internet.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Who in the open-source community would pay what it costs to develop Firefox? I hope some organization would, but it's a huge and expensive project to run.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

In before Meta buys Mozilla, lol.

Zuckerberg is on a "spoiling other tech giants with Facebook money" streak.

[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

Oh hey, you managed to think up the one scenario that would make me abandon Firefox

[–] Bluefruit@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Great question that I dont have an answer for. Maybe one of the foundations that supports Linux development? This is just my hope though. No idea what it would really take to maintain Firefox at this point. Maybe if it was scaled down or something it'd be ok in the hands of just the open source community as a whole but I'm not well versed in programming or development so i dont know.

I gotta try and be optimistic about this kinda stuff because i forsee a future where Google just ruins more and more of the internet and i hate the thought of that.

[–] MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago

Servo is now being looked after by the Linux Foundation in Europe, but is only maintained by volunteers. But another project has arrived that is not based on Chromium, Webkit or Firefox, which may be a hope in this somewhat confusing situation.

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[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not at their revenues come from Google and other sources are enough to cover Firefox development... But that would mean giving up on all the useless shit no one asked for they're working on...

[–] EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 3 months ago

Mozilla's next largest source of revenue is subscriptions and advertising (source 2021 financial report), by a wide margin. That "useless shit" is their other revenue, and they're investing in it because they know they need to diversify revenue to fund Firefox. You're suggesting they kill it because it's not their core (unprofitable) business?

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[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

$510MM out of $593MM?!? WTF Mozilla?

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[–] Lampshade@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Based on their 2022 report, only half of their expenses were on software development costs - around $220m, and it’s not clear what portion of that was on Firefox vs other projects.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf

In terms of revenue: around $100m was from sources other than Google.

Therefore, it seems plausible to me that Firefox development could still be funded with $100m of annual revenue. At a smaller level no doubt, but still in existence nonetheless.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (9 children)

Given that they are focusing on initiatives like intrusive adverts and machine learning BS, I'm okay with them cutting that kind of nonsense off; Firefox still doesn't have a native vertical tab bar.

[–] YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And their bookmark manager on android is absolute crap.

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[–] dan@upvote.au 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Firefox still doesn't have a native vertical tab bar.

At least the extension APIs are powerful enough to have an extension that does a decent job (or even a great job, in the case of extensions like Sidebery), plus there's a way to hide the regular top tabs. That's not the case with Chrome.

You could also use a Firefox fork like Floorp that has native support for tree-style tabs.

[–] kokofruits_1@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The translation tool is pretty good though

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[–] egerlach@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Firefox still doesn't have a native vertical tab bar.

That is only mostly true now. There is an about:config setting you can turn on in FF 129 (released this week) which will let you have native vertical tabs. The implementation is only about half done, but it's good enough for me to use alongside Sidebery Tabs.

You can track progress on vertical tabs in Bugzilla. They are also working on tab groups, but that work is at an earlier stage.

All in all, I think we'll see vertical tabs in the next 6 months or so? As a devout Firefox user and resister of the Chromium monopoly, I am really excited.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 0 points 3 months ago

Why have I never considered vertical tabs before? The screen is way too wide for normal pages, you can fit a bunch more information sideways per tab, and way more tabs vertically than horizontally. You could even double-stack them with all the space available.

This is such an obvious change to make.

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[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago

And profiles work like shit, at least they announced they were gonna get to it...

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[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

This is the way. Mozilla is bloated to fuck as a company. They need to be forced to get back on their main goal: Building a fucking Browser.

No ad deals, no stupid cloud features, just actual browser and privacy features.

There is no fucking way all that money is actually being spent on maintaining core firefox functionality.

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[–] toasteecup@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

I would pay money to keep Firefox foss for other people who can't afford to do so.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Mozilla management was paid millions to develop a new “vision” of a theoretical future with AI chatbots

Is this llamafile?

The thing about LLMs is that no one knows how to write the ultra low level optimizations/runtimes, so they port others (llamafile largely borrows from llama.cpp AFAIK, albeit with some major contributions from their own devs).

Performance is insanely critical because they're so darn hard to run, and new models/features come out weekly which no sane dev can keep up with without massive critical mass (like HF Transformers, mainly, with llama.cpp barely keeping up with some major jank).

So... I'm not sure what Mozilla is thinking here. They don't have many of those kind of devs, they don't have a GPU farm, they're not even contributing to promising webassembly projects like mlc-llm. They're just one of a bazillion companies that was ordered to get into AI with no real purpose or advantage. And while Gemma 2B may be the "first" model that's kinda OK on average PCs, we're still a long way away from easy mass local deployment.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I'm a local LLM tinkerer, and I've never touched or even looked at anything from Mozilla. The community would have if anything of theirs was super useful.

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[–] aggelalex@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Everybody forgets that if chrome and chromium breaks away from Google because of this ruling, it's going to have the same issues as Firefox, if not worse because it's an arguably worse product. The ruling has been pronounced, but what will happen because of it is yet to be defined.

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 0 points 3 months ago

Why would Chrome/chromium break away? Isn't this just about the search engine side of things? There's no need to dump Chrome if all they need to do is drop themselves as the default search engine.

[–] Tyfud@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

That's not it at all. The issue is funding Mozilla. Having it as the default search engine is something google currently pays them for the right for. If the DOJ says that's anti-trust practices, then Google stops paying Mozilla for that right, and 80% of Mozilla's funding dries up overnight.

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[–] cmysmiaczxotoy@lemm.ee 0 points 3 months ago (13 children)

I needed, I would pay $5 per month in perpetuity for access to Firefox. Fuck google

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[–] DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago
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